Saturday, April 26, 2014

What to expect at Sunday's OCA meeting

Sunday’s special general meeting is approaching and with it,
the future path of curling in Ontario.

The meeting will be the second in a month for the embattled
Ontario Curling Association, which will once again face its membership over a
variety of issues. However this time, it won’t be in control of the agenda.

On the table this time out are votes of non-confidence for
both the board and the president.

A few items of note have arisen ahead of the meeting.

First is that president Ian McGillis has taken a leave of
absence from his position. The leave is for health reasons and I understand
McGillis has been sick for some time.

While this blog has been critical of his handling of
affairs, we certainly hope for the best in dealing with his health issues.

Second is that since the last meeting, the Toronto Curling
Association, the Ottawa Valley Curling Association and the Hamilton and Area
Curling Association have come out and publicly stated their opposition to the
current OCA board and its operations, which has undoubtedly ratcheted up the
heat.

And third, yesterday was the last formal day on the job for
Doug Bakes. He was the OCA’s executive director for the past dozen years and while
I never had any issue with him on a media basis, some suggest he has been part
of the problems for the OCA.

Stephen Chenier takes over his new role as the executive
director on Monday.

On Sunday, presumably the current board will present the
case for the future -- how it plans to deal with the issues that have arisen and
move ahead.

Since the last meeting there haven’t been many signs of
change but to be fair, a month isn’t a long time. Communication, one of the
hot-button issues and one for which the board apologized, has shown very little
in the way of improvement. There are a few new posts on the web site. The draft
of the minutes from the previous meeting were made available and were
distributed to those who requested it (The content of those minutes, however,
left a few people scratching their heads.)

And sadly, a business of curling workshop slated for early
May at Queen’s University was cancelled. I wonder how much of that was due to a
lack of communication?

There will be several votes on Sunday. The first will be to
reinstate Bill Rourke as a member at large.

Rourke has been a longtime member of the OCA executive and a
talented rules official. At last year’s OCA General Meeting, a list of the new
executive was included in a binder and voted on by the members. For some
reason, Rourke’s name was left off that list and when the vote was held he was
gone.

According to one person, a few members of the OCA executive
decided that since he’d missed a number of meetings and turned down the request
to work at one or two events, he should be punted.

Rourke apparently disagrees with that version of events, but
no matter. The bigger issue is that no one asked him if he was interested in
staying on, no one called him to say he was being left off and no one thanked
him for his past efforts.

There is also another part to this story. Remember I said
Rourke was a talented official? He worked at a number of CCA events and that
allegedly upset some at the OCA who viewed him as an ally of the CCA. He hasn’t
worked an OCA event in a long, long time.

The second vote will be to re-instate Dale Curtis as the
first vice-president of the OCA. Just prior to the last meeting, Curtis was
dumped from her position as veep but stayed on the board, despite a
heavy-handed push to get her off.

At the time the board said they believed she was funneling
board documents to “blogs and the media” for which they offered no proof
whatsoever.

What’s silly about the move is that it changed nothing in
terms of what Curtis had access to. She is still a board member and still gets
board documents.

The next two votes will be the biggest ones – non-confidence
votes on the president and the entire board. Those are self-explanitory.

Now I’m presuming that the board will have enough votes and
proxies to control all four votes. I hope I’m wrong in that but we’ll see.

I have heard from a few different people that there is a
plan in place should the vote to oust the board pass. I’ve also heard of people
with some governance plans, which is in dire need of alterations.

I understand the board is bringing in a person skilled at running
meetings to keep order and ensure rules are followed, a positive step. I wonder
if we’ll have another police officer there?

So what am I looking for on Sunday? I’m looking for signs
that the board understands the gravity of this situation in which it finds
itself.

I want to see that the members aren’t viewing this as just a
few malcontents speaking out, that they realize this is a wide-spread issue
that could affect the very existence of the Ontario Curling Association.

I also want to see that the board isn’t just saying things
to keep their positions, that they truly understand the need for change.

One way or another, the meeting will be a turning point for curling in Ontario.